


A Pisswater Prince for a Dragon

by LyaStark



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-15 23:47:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3466565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyaStark/pseuds/LyaStark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Aegon despairs over the question of his identity, Arya offers him the best comfort she can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Pisswater Prince for a Dragon

No one spoke during the entire ride back to camp, nor even when they entered the pavilion. Daenerys’ rejection of their offers and plans had been too harsh and thorough to easily recover from.

Aegon paced about, unsure of what to do with himself. He had known Daenerys would accept him once he had proven himself a conqueror in his own right. He had _known_ it. Never had it occurred to him that she might not, even though he had come to dread their union as a necessity in many ways.

If she had merely refused, _that_ he could have born. But the accusations… 

He looked around at his companions. Lemore prayed, Haldon scurried about shuffling papers in an attempt to look busy, and Jon just sat there staring straight ahead. Arya stood in a corner and watched them all blankly.

“It isn’t true,” Aegon proclaimed with far more confidence than he felt. He had to say something. He had to fill up that ominous silence that threatened to drive him mad. “Daenerys- she’s wrong. Someone has poisoned her against me with lies.”

He despised the sound of his own desperation so he closed his mouth again and dragged his fingers through his pale hair.

Still, no one spoke any words of comfort to him.

Lemore knelt in a corner and muttered a prayer to the Crone for guidance. Jon brooded at the table with his chin perched on clenched fists. Every so often Aegon felt his foster father examining him out of the corner of his eye. The prince didn’t have to wonder why. Jon searched for signs of his old friend in Aegon’s features, something to reassure him that he hadn’t frittered away years of his life on a lie.

Both Jon and Lemore had given up so much – their homes, their status, their very names – all for him. If Daenerys spoke true, if he wasn’t the trueborn son of Prince Rhaegar and Princess Elia, that meant they sacrificed all for nothing. It meant _he_ was nothing. Not even a proper orphan with splendid parents to dream of and a dear sister to mourn. Nothing but -- what had Daenerys called him -- a mummer’s dragon.

Aegon drew in a sharp breath to cool the anxiousness sparking in his chest, but that only served to inflame the feeling.

“Say something!” Aegon shouted.

Every eye turned to him with sympathy, concern, and questions. So many questions.

“It’s a lie,” Jon agreed, turning has gaze away. “Daenerys will come to see that.”

Arya strode toward Aegon and rested a hand on his arm. He struggled not to fold her into an embrace and inhale that comforting blend of horse, leather, and wolf he came to associate with her. He might even be able to kiss her now in full view of Jon and the others what with Daenerys’ rejection of his offers.

But the touch was brief. Arya continued to walk on through the tent flaps. Aegon’s stomach dropped at the sight of her leaving. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. She had come to his cause in her brother’s name to help the North. If Daenerys wouldn’t accept him, he was of no use to her. He hated the thought of her being amongst the first of his allies to flock to the Mother of Dragons’ side, especially after all they had shared.

But then, perhaps Arya wouldn’t go to her. Daenerys had not shown any love for her father or her House.

“We can’t allow the details of our meeting with Daenerys to become known among the camp,” Jon said. “Homeless Harry, the reachmen, the storm lords,  and the others will abandon us. Mayhaps even the Dornish. The strong foothold we have won in Westeros is our greatest advantage in negotiations. We cannot-”

“Aside from my claim, you mean,” Aegon said quickly. “My claim to the throne is stronger than hers and our greatest advantage moving forward.”

Jon stared at him, a look he reserved for those he had lost patience with. “We must needs convince her of that before we can make use of it. When next we meet with her to renew your offers-”

“I won’t make any offers, not again,” Aegon said.

“My prince-”

“I will not beg her! I came to her a kinsman with an army and allies and territories sworn to me. Then she spit in my face and called me a liar. I won’t go back to beg her again. That would only prove that I am no Targaryen at all. I refuse to prove her right.”

Before Jon could argue with him any further, Aegon stormed out of the pavilion. Duck had fallen into step beside him and straight away began making light of what had happened, like it were some great joke they could get around to setting to rights after a fashion. The white knight only meant well. Aegon knew that . But gods, he was in no mood for japes. Once they reached his own pavilion, Aegon commanded that he be left alone.

Unfortunately, time alone with more of that treacherous silence amidst the distant neighing of horses and muted voices from the camp only served to strengthen Aegon’s fears. What if it was true? What if the real Aegon had died in the sack of King’s Landing, while he was nothing but the lowborn get of a man who sold him for Arbor gold? What if every moment of his life had been nothing but a mummer’s trick?

Soon sleep claimed him, only to fill his mind with dragons soaring through the skies out of his reach.

Aegon woke as a small hand closed over his mouth.

“You ought to find better guards,” Arya’s voice whispered in the darkened tent. “Rolly might as well have been asleep for all the notice he paid me when I slipped around him.”

He couldn’t put into words how palpable his relief was at her coming to him, so he didn’t try. Aegon simply drew the darkened shape of her close and kissed her.

“A pisswater prince doesn’t have need of guards,” he said after a time.

Arya stiffened. He felt her move away from him with the slight shift of the bed and a sudden rush of cold.

“You stop that right now,” she said, illuminating the tent with one candle and then another. “We don’t have time to waste on your self-pity.”

Aegon sat up and blinked in the sudden light. “And I thought you’d come to comfort me.”

He took in the sight of her still in her boiled leathers. Arya had accompanied them when they had gone to treat with Daenerys. Ignoring Jon’s insistence that she don silks, Arya had told them she wished to meet the Mother of Dragons as a war commander. In the end, it hadn’t mattered much what she wore, for the second she was introduced as Lady Arya Stark of Winterfell, Daenerys’ demeanor cooled toward her, and she treated her with the same contempt as the rest of them.

“I came to make a plan.” Arya brushed a messy braid over her shoulder and crossed her arms. “We have to have one.”

“Do your plans involve me crawling back to my aunt?” he asked bitterly. Though the thought still infuriated him, Aegon couldn’t think of any other. Not when she had dragons and he didn’t.

“No,” Arya said. “If you go begging, she’ll just tell you no again, only this time she’ll know you’re a fake for sure. Targaryens don’t beg. They take what’s theirs.”

“She believes I’m a fake already.”

“She doesn’t,” Arya said. “Didn’t you see the way she looked at you?”

Of course he had seen. Instead of greeting him with warmth as one would a kinsman, her violet eyes were narrowed with suspicion each time they fell upon him.

“She doubts me. She said so.”

“She studied you like she was hoping to see something,” Arya said. She returned to sit on the edge of the bed and seemed to be examining his features as well. "She was looking for her family, most like.”

Aegon hadn’t seen that in Daenerys, but he knew very well what that was like. The eagerness at the prospect of meeting Daenerys wasn’t solely motivated by the expectation of gaining a new ally, nor even of seeing those splendid dragons. He longed to finally meet someone of his own blood, to at last find something of the family he had been robbed of.

“She _found_ her family,” he said. “ I _am_ her family.”

 _But if I’m not…_ Aegon bolted to his feet and began to pace around the tent restlessly.

“You know that don’t you?” he asked. “You know I am Aegon Targaryen? You believe me?”

She grabbed his arm and stopped his pacing. “It doesn’t matter if I believe it or if I don’t. What matters is what the people of Westeros think. It matters what Daenerys thinks. They have to see you as their king. They have to _want_ you for their king.”

“If Daenerys won’t support my claim-”

“Then we’ll prove you’re the Targaryen heir without her help,” Arya said. “With dragons.”

Aegon stared at her for a beat. When he laughed out loud, the sound was bitter and rueful.

“A splendid plan. I only need six or mayhaps nine dragons to outdo my aunt’s three. Dragons aren’t easy to come by, my love.”

“Shut up, I mean it." Arya shoved him when he kept laughing. “I _mean_ it. We need dragons. At least one. Daenerys has two she isn’t using. We’ll take them.”

Staring into her grey eyes, Aegon searched for some sign that she was japing. But Arya met his gaze without faltering.

“The last man who tried to take them-”

“-had Targaryen blood and still failed,” Arya finished. She strode over to him and kissed him lightly. “We’ll be more careful. And when we fly out of her camp with them, it won’t matter if you’re Aegon Targaryen or Griff, the sellsword’s son.”

The more Aegon turned the idea over in his mind, the more he liked it. The plan was bold and daring and very Targaryen. He seized Arya and kissed her again.

“You agree then?” Arya asked with one of her rare smiles.

“Of course,” Aegon said. “It’s the only plan that makes sense. If you want to conquer the world, you best have dragons.”


End file.
